Tuesday, July 08, 2008 Hamilton By Steve Slater Special Contributor
WITH both the Wimbledon tennis finals and the British Grand Prix on the same British summer’s day, you could probably have placed a safe bet on the storm clouds gathering. When they duly delivered their watery contents, they allowed Lewis Hamilton to weave a bit of magic around the Silverstone circuit.
Given the circumstances of the likely future of the British Grand Prix, it is tempting to look back to the last time a Formula One race was held at the Donington Park racing circuit, which will host the GP once again from 2010.
Back in 1993, the European Grand started in similar sodden conditions. It went on to see one of Formula One’s greatest drives.
In that race, Ayrton Senna started from fourth place on the grid in his McLaren. He then pulled off a stupendous move in the opening series of corners to vault into the race lead – and stormed away from his rivals. At the checkered flag, the Brazilian was over a minute ahead of his nearest rival. Damon Hill, in second place, was the only driver not to be lapped. Alain Prost finished third, a full lap behind.
Back to Silverstone. Lewis Hamilton started from fourth place on the grid in his McLaren. He then pulled off a stupendous move in the opening series of corners to vault into the race lead and then stormed away from his rivals. At the chequered flag, the Briton was over a minute ahead of his nearest rival….I’m sure you get my point.
The interesting thing is that Hamilton’s victory came against a background of continually changing track conditions. The track started wet, then, over the first third of the race, began to dry. Then another rain shower hit and the track became wetter than ever. One perfect description for the resulting conditions is “tire poker”.
In the event, Hamilton played a straight hand impeccably. He started the race on less heavily-treaded intermediate tires. As the conditions deteriorated, he trusted to the McLaren’s compliant handling and ‘tip-toed’ his way around the deep water.
When track conditions improved, he drove through the edges of the standing water to keep his tires cool and to minimize wear. It was a race that demonstrated that Hamilton has a perfect feel for his car and a light touch at the helm when required.
The same could be said for Nick Heidfeld, who finished in a well-deserved second place. In recent races, the German drivers had been overshadowed by his BMW teammate Robert Kubica, whose more aggressive driving style had worked better on dry tracks. In the Silverstone spray, Heidfeld’s silky smooth style paid dividends.
There were those who gambled in the tire poker and won. Rubens Barrichello matched his wet weather expertise with a cleverly timed decision to switch to the heavily treaded, “extreme wet” tires – and promptly shot up the leaderboard to score a surprise third place, the last driver on the same lap as the winner. We all know the result was a lucky fluke for Honda, but there was unanimous delight in seeing ‘Rubinho’ back on the podium.
Ferrari too played tire poker – and lost. Their decision to leave Kimi Raikkonen on his worn-out tires at the first pit stop could have been an inspired one, if only it had stopped raining.
In that scenario the worn out treads would have placed more rubber on the road and they’d have acted like slicks. If the track had dried, they might have beaten Hamilton. But it didn’t and Kimi Raikkonen, like Fernando Alonso who’d taken a similar gamble, slithered back into the midfield.
More worrying was Felipe Massa’s performance.
The Ferrari, more stiffly sprung to aid its dry-weather aerodynamic efficiency, was clearly the most knife-edge, twitchy car in the conditions, but the Brazilian once again proved that he was more reliant on the now-absent electronic traction control than other drivers. My washing machine doesn’t offer as many options for spinning as Massa demonstrated!
Finally, a piece of driving that perhaps even shaded Lewis Hamilton’s Silverstone performance. Mark Webber pulled off an awesome lap in qualifying to put the Red Bull second on the starting grid. But that was nothing in comparison with the opening lap of the race.
Imagine the scenario. Wet track, Hamilton and Kovalainen are fighting for the lead ahead. Webber is wheel-to-wheel with Raikkonen’s Ferrari in the Becketts Corner complex when the car spins. Suddenly Webber is facing backwards, with sixteen other cars heading right at him.
It should have been the recipe for carnage, but thanks to Webber’s cool head it wasn’t. Still traveling at over 200km/h, Webber calmly reversed the car off the racing line and out of trouble. He rejoined and eventually finished in tenth place, but that piece of reverse driving was maybe the neatest trick of the whole weekend!
(Steve Slater is the expert half of the popular F1 commentary duo on STAR Sports. Slater is a veritable encyclopedia of motor racing and has been involved in the sport at many levels including as journalist, race-organizer, radio broadcaster, and now commentator.)
